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Visa has turned the payment application development model on its head. By making a sandbox available to all developers that safely mimics the Visa network, developers are free to innovate with no investment.

Boston, MA (PRWEB)April 25, 2016

New research from Mercator Advisory Group titled The Visa Developer Platform: Opening the Gates to Innovation identifies how Visa has opened up its network to the widest possible range of developers by creating a sandbox that all developers are free to play in. This approach is entirely new, and if it succeeds in generating innovation, it will become the model for other networks, acquirers, and perhaps innovative issuers. The research note also provides a nontechnical guide to the services that have been API enabled so businesses can quickly grasp how these application programming interfaces (APIs) can be used in their environment to better engage existing customers and create new business opportunities.

“Visa has turned the payment application development model on its head,” said Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation, at Mercator Advisory Group and author of report. “By making a sandbox available to all developers that safely mimics the Visa network, developers are free to innovate with no investment. In return, Visa and its partners have the opportunity to identify and select the solutions that show the most promise. Obviously payment applications must ultimately be sponsored by an entity that is obligated to protect the network, but the sandbox lets developers show everyone one they can accomplish which should make finding a trusted Visa partner much easier. This approach will have ramifications for issuing banks, merchant banks, merchant acquirers, and ISOs.”

Highlights of the research note:

Provides the reader a simple guide to the services that Visa has made available to the public

Provides a reasonable level of detail related to the specific functions each API controls sufficient to enable businesspeople to think through how each API could be incorporated into their respective business processes

Analyzes the impact of this new approach to finding developers, especially the availability of the sandbox

Analyzes the potential impact on competitors

This note is 19 pages long and has 1 exhibit.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group's Emerging Technologies Advisory Service have access to this report as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access, and other membership benefits.

About Mercator Advisory Group
Mercator Advisory Group is the leading, independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com.